Gertrude

[gazza31112]

Organised the false floor storage box for all flat tyre eventualities

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[kobat79]

Very nice. That looks mint and very satisfying to the old OCD!

[gazza31112]

Came across a cheap illuminated passat cupholder online so thought it was worth a try....
After alot of cutting and making room for the bigger unit under the centre console Iv finally got it to fit, after cutting out a bit more than I would of liked!
Ali express does a led kit which replaces the little sprung pieces with ones with ambient lights in.
Iv brought so many kits over years I actually had enough to drill some holes and do it myself with what I already had!
Still a bit of work to do around the cut edge but over the moon with how it looks

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[Be4ny13]

Love the cup holder mod with the lights. Got me thinking about reworking mine now!

[petrev]

Totally mad wonderful stuff !!!

Great to see it in the flesh with all the new stuff.
Brilliant

[Jase14]

Looking forward to see it first hand, fantastic work

[gazza31112]

One of the reasons for the van being off the road for a while...
The dash is booked in to be wrapped in alcantara at the end of September to finish off the interior....

Then I had the bright idea of ripping the whole thing apart and making something custom....
So here it is!
Still work in progress but I can rarely get on the forum now to put regular updates, plus this is all very classified information

Found a damaged Caddy dash at a breakers for £150, then a Mercedes C class dash for £100
Started off with cutting the mercedes vent mounts out, then cutting out the caddy vents and attempting to make the mercedes mount to fit on the caddy dash, which was harder than I expected!

Then came cutting out and rebuilding the centre dash to relocate the heating controls to what I think is a better location below the stereo, then got a 10inch pioneer screen, to replace the 7 inch unit I had, with the idea of instead of having it floating to build it into the top of the dash, where the heater controls once were.

Ontop of the dash in the storage tray will be a Scirocco style gauge pod (all aftermarket stuff as a Scirocco one was too small) inside will house a wolfbox dashcam mirror which will serve as a constant rear view camera feed, (an idea stolen from my Berlingo work van), all will be full alcantara to match.

An idea came to me halfway through to try and build a Tesla style full length ambient light strip.
I had to grind a channel into the curve of the back of the dash and bond in a L trim which I can slot a flexible 6mm led tube diffuser into, which is working... But needs some more "finesse" before I'm happy with it

Then came the filler.... An ungodly amount of plastic filler!
Filled the passenger storage hole thingy and feathered in all the vents.

Had some big issues early on with the mercedes dash being alot more foamy and softer than the hard plastics of the caddy, which was causing more flex than the filler could handle so needed some specialist PP adhesives to sure everything up, which ended up working quite well.

Then came the sanding, then more sanding.. And even more sanding, used my Makita sander more than I ever have!

Trying to also incorporate some aftermarket golf 7 ambient lighting, also into the doorcards to match, then had the utter ballache of trying to rewire all these different ambient lighting kits to work with one single controller, which is now all up and running.

First test fit today was a bit scary as Its been sitting in the blazing sun in the garden for weeks I noticed a slight flex starting so was worried as soon as it went in all the filler would fail! But luckily it dropped in nicely.

Still some hurdles to overcome mainly finding a way to fix the heater panel in, and finding a space for the hazard switch and lastly trying to make some aftermarket vent trims fit the new shape dash but iv still got a while to get all the niggles sorted out before it gets "alcantarared"

The steering wheel, gear gaitor, handbrake and touran armrest has also been sent off to loose the leather and be replaced with alcantara.


The finished picture below is as close as I can get to AI understanding my prompts! But that's the overall vision.

Will update when it's progressed a bit more!

[Scotscad]

Looks the dogs mate. Im going to throw a spanner into the works and suggest a heads up display to finish it off. Ur welcome

[the swan fiend]

That’s truly unique mate. It’s going to look amazing when it’s done. Some work gone into that!


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